


Plain Old Marley Rose

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Abusive Kitty Wilde, Aromantic Jake Puckerman, Bulimia, Domestic Violence, Episode: s04e01 The New Rachel, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Marley-centric, Mental Health Issues, One-Sided Attraction, Past Child Sexual Abuse - Canon, season 4, wallflower - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21603919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Marley Rose likes flowers, kittens and Julie Andrews. She loves her mom, writing songs in secret and admiring tall beautiful boys from across the hall. She isn’t sure that she is supposed to call boys beautiful – not ones that didn’t dress up like Unique or gel their hair like Blaine – but she can’t help it. She’s always been obsessed with beauty.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Jake Puckerman & Marley Rose, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ryder Lynn & Marley Rose, Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce, Unique Adams & Marley Rose
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Plain Old Marley Rose

_Prologue._

Marley Rose likes flowers, kittens and Julie Andrews. She loves her mom, writing songs in secret and admiring tall beautiful boys from across the hall. She isn’t sure that she is supposed to call boys beautiful – not ones that didn’t dress up like Unique or gel their hair like Blaine – but she can’t help it. She’s always been obsessed with beauty.

Her latest fancy is bad news, Unique has told her. A _womaniser_. He’s hot blooded, angry, rageful – but when she saw him toss over that music stand, eyes blazing, she hadn’t felt scared or chiding. Marley had felt a resonance in her chest – not of anger, not of fire, but extreme temperature. A pounding emotion that she can’t quite suppress. This reaching hand for beauty, for perfection, for being the New Rachel. Marley has always been a plain brunet. Her mother says she’s beautiful, that she’s got all this loveliness surrounding her and all this talent, but Marley knows that’s just what mothers are meant to say.

There’s nothing special about Marley, and the only reason the glee kids think she’s the New Rachel is because she can sing and put fire into her songs. It’s all a mechanism; moving lips, thrumming words, swallowing, whispering, breathing. She’s a plain cogged machine, and she’s just waiting for them to realise it.

He says he doesn’t fit in because of his skin, but Marley knows that isn’t quite right. It’s a little too simplistic, melting down a person to their most basic attributes. She knows he says that because he’s scared to say what he really thinks, because although Mckinley is tooted to be “diverse” and “accepting” Unique is still shoved in the halls, the glee kids still drip from slushies, and the teenagers feel as if they must fit into singular peg holes. You’re a jock or a gleek or a troll or a nobody. They’re living in a world of mutual exclusivity; Marley doesn’t dare say that she used to swim as a child, doesn’t want to be labelled a pretentious athlete.

They say that he’s just like his older brother; Puck. A self-proclaimed “badass” who’d originally called Glee gay and for losers. A womaniser, too. It must run in the genes. Except, he hadn’t in the end. Puck had found love, and a daughter, and the world had gone on. He’d graduated and left, made something of himself out in the world. Marley knows Jake isn’t a womaniser; not in the same way Puck was.

Puck dated. He dined and dashed, kissed and missed, did it then split. He sexed up every girl at McKinley at least twice. But, when he went looking for love, he found it.

Jake is different. Marley can tell, because she’s different too. She puts up this facade, just like him, of a goofy poor girl who just wants to fit in and be loved. It’s true, on the surface, but therein lies something beneath that same surface too. There’s a reason she wears clothes with sewn in fashion labels, even though no one ever looks at the collar of your shirt; because it isn’t for her peace of mind, it's for Mom's. Jake is the same in his placement of walls. He has walls, like her. He's doing it for other people, too. The students at McKinley. Unlike Puck, he isn’t looking for sex when he dates even though he pretends he is. In reality, he's already had enough sex to satisfy himself physically. He’s looking for dates, for love, but not finding any. Even when his cogs turn and whine in all the right ways. The girls swoon, he kisses her cheek, he meets her eyes, he loves her for the night.

At least, that’s how the fairytale goes, but she knows it isn't the same for him. Just like how she can sing, and dance, and pulse with energy; it doesn't mean she feels it in her bones. Jake romances, but he doesn't feel the romance internally. He doesn't actually love the girls even when he desperately wants to.

Marley knows this because she has been watching. She guesses that’s creepy of her, but she can’t help it. She draws him in her songbook. She writes their names together within a love-heart, like those carvings you sometimes find in trees, haloed by ‘x’s and ‘o’s. She daydreams about the perfect date that she knows will never come to fruition. She’s addicted to him, already. She’s always been one to fall hard for fantasies. He always manages to attract her gaze with his spit-fire personality, his tight constraint that’s always bulging. She can feel the tension in the air begin to rise, like Mom on binge night. The window panes begin to rattle, the cupboard writhe in anticipation, the plastic crinkles. We all know where the emotions go, and it isn’t into words.

He’s dating Kitty now, but the thought doesn’t enrage her. She knows the truth. She knows that Kitty is the only one ‘dating’ in that relationship of theirs, no matter how many leather jackets she pulls over her own shoulders. That’s not love; that’s taking a dive in a charity clothes bin.

She looks forward to tomorrow. She does. She promises she appreciates the opportunities she has been given. The pressure isn’t too much. It can’t be. She isn’t laying awake in her bed, eyes closed, pretending her world is okay, her bed is not lumpy, and she isn’t cold. She’s got a full stomach, and she doesn’t still feel queasy just thinking about Kitty and Jake and all these burdens on her shoulders. She’s Marley. Plain ol’ happy Marley.

/


End file.
